Attracting new customers to your CPA firm is something that must occur in order for your business to scale. Even if your client retention is high year-after-year, you still need to add new CPA clients in order to experience an upward tick in growth.

A solid CPA firm marketing plan that’s centered around the top search engine’s local business listing directory, Google My Business, is the most effective way to attract new CPA customers to your firm. Google is where most people are going to turn when they need to find a local CPA firm for their accounting needs.

So, being found on the top of the search results and having a business profile that creates instant credibility is very important, and it all starts with your Google My Business profile. It acts as the gateway to your CPA firm’s main website and it also has the ability to generate phone calls and text messages directly – completely bypassing your website.

The information that we use to create and optimize your Google My Business listing is what Google indexes and uses in its Maps and Search results. The entire organic CPA company marketing strategy is created around your GMB listing.

There are several ways that your Google My Business profile helps to attract new CPA firm clients. We are going to highlight five tips that if followed, will help you attract more qualified phone calls and website traffic. As those numbers scale, your conversions should also increase resulting in new CPA client acquisition.

1. Enable GMB Messaging

Part of an effective CPA company local marketing effort involves making it easy for a potential customer to contact your firm in addition to simply driving impressions and website visitors. Google My Business is constantly adapting with technology and consumer behavior, and its messaging feature is a perfect example of this.

This is a feature that you can enable within your GMB settings, allowing someone that comes into contact with your business listing to text message your CPA firm rather than send an email or make a traditional phone call.

Why would you want to enable this feature and field text messages from potential CPA clients? It just eliminates a common barrier many businesses face these days – consumers, especially the Millennial and Gen Z demographic, prefer text messaging as their main communication channel.

This helps ensure you don’t miss out on a potential new client for your CPA firm by accepting all available communication options. When you enable this within your Google My Business settings you can set any mobile number as the device you will field messages from and reply to messages from.

Online marketing and the way your clients communicate with your firm is always going to change. It’s a good idea to be open to new opportunities – being the first in your local market to embrace and adapt to them can lead to new growth opportunities.

2. Audit for Accurate and Up-to-Date Listing Information

One of the very first things we tackle when kicking off a new CPA company search engine optimization campaign is to fully audit the Google My Business listing, making sure everything is up-to-date and all of the firm’s details are accurate.

There are four main components of the GMB listing that need to be checked for accuracy:

1. Name, Address and Phone Number: This is standard business information, but you would be shocked at how many listings we audit that have an old phone number listed or the previous location’s address still attached. These little oversights can lead to missed opportunities. How can you expect to attract new CPA customers if they can’t properly contact your firm?

2. Description and Website: It’s important that your website URL is on your listing, and for the best CPA firm SEO practice, make sure it’s in full structure form, complete with the “https” – this type of consistency is important. Your description needs to be written in a way that it satisfies Google without keyword stuffing and also speaks to potential clients. This is where the skillset of and experience CPA SEO agency comes into play.

3. Attributes: These are the little “extras” that your business offers, and highlighting them can help you answer questions and help attract business. For example, if your office has free parking, include that. Any little extra that can make your firm more appealing than the other options should be leveraged.

4. Category: This is the most common mistake most businesses make, and one that isn’t talked about enough. Google allows you to assign a category to your listing and it’s important that you pick the one that best describes what it is that you do. We will often see firms have “Business Services” or “Financial Services” listed as their category, whereas “Accounting Firm” would be more relevant. Remember, Google uses this information – make it as easy as possible for its algorithm to rank your business listing accordingly.

3. Pay Attention to Your Insights Data

CPA company SEO requires constant data analyzing and then adjustments according to what that data shows. Search engine optimization isn’t set-it-and-forget-it – we have to always make changes to improve the campaign.

While there are plenty of third-party tools and software that we use for data collection, some of the most valuable information is found directly within the Google My Business profile – its “Insights” provides information related to the following:

1. Location & Discoverability Data: This gives you a look into where your customers live that come in contact with your listing, which can be helpful and let you know whether or not you’re attracting the right market and also help you identify areas you need to shift more of your focus on. You can also see how your GMB profile is being found – either through Google Search or Google Maps.

2. Phone Call Duration & Time: Being on top of the search results is great, but the only way your CPA firm is going to grow is by attracting website visitors and making the phone ring. Insights will show you how often calls originated from your Google My Business listing and at what times they came in.

3. Post-GMB Actions: While the phone data mentioned above is great, not everyone is going to want to speak on the phone. This is where this data comes into play – did they text your business? Did they click for directions to your CPA firm? Did they click-through to your website? You can then use this information to determine whether or not you are converting CPA clients at an acceptable rate.

We make it a point to monitor the information available to us through the GMB profile on a regular basis, looking for ways to constantly improve not only sheer traffic numbers, but client acquisition numbers as well.

4. Publish Content Updates Directly on GMB

Publishing content is nothing new when it comes to CPA company marketing. There is a good chance you already have a blog on your CPA firm’s website and you regularly publish new blog posts.

What is fairly new, though, is publishing content on Google My Business. This is something that was introduced that allows you to post small micro-blogs directly on your profile. They are shown in the search results and can help you attract attention to your listing.

Content published on your GMB page must be less than 300 words and it’s a good idea to keep your topics relevant as they expire and “fall off” after seven days. You also have the ability to make them expire in less than seven days.

Even though there is a limit on the content word-count, it’s still a chance to help attract traffic from Google, so it’s good to use the same optimization strategy on this content that would be used on standard posts for your blog.

An image can also be used to help attract clicks, and emojis in the title work well to improve click-through rates. Within the actual content you can link to external sources, like content and pages on your website. You can also add a CTA button – sending the potential CPA firm client to a special offer.

5. Make an Effort to Convert All Customers into Google Reviews

Now, for the last tip – and this one might be the most important one of all. You need CPA company Google reviews – often and in large numbers. Why? It directly benefits your CPA firm SEO and it helps convert more prospects into flu fledged accounting clients.

Not only does Google’s algorithm rewards listings with a large number of favorable reviews, but it also makes a listing stand out amongst the other options in the Google Maps results. Consumers are more likely to click on a listing that has a lot of high reviews (and recent ones) over a listing with very few.

It’s natural consumer behavior – so the best thing you can do is ensure that the majority of your CPA firm clients leave you a review. This can be set up to automatically ask and follow up, providing them easy to follow instructions that guides them to your GMB listing. 
When you do see a new review come in make sure you respond to it immediately. This lets the client that left the review know you appreciate them and it shows potential clients that you care about who you work with.

Overwhelmed at the thought of another task to add to your to-do list? Don’t worry – we have systems that we introduce and monitor, allowing you to remain focused on what you do best – accounting.

Final Thoughts

Many local business owners ignore Google My Business – or simply aren’t aware of how important it is and the type of positive impact it has. You cannot simply create a half-hearted listing and expect it to attract CPA clients.

It requires proper optimization initially and then ongoing maintenance. For example, you have to constantly attract new reviews on your GMB listing – this helps your firm maintain its position in the results, while also helping it reach the very top. It also helps you convert more customers that seek out reviews prior to making a final hiring decision.

If you are ready to experience growth at your CPA firm, and do so by leveraging the power of organic Google traffic, contact us today. Our team of CPA firm marketing experts will explain what we can do to help position your business at the top of your local search results.

In addition, we will conduct a complete online visibility audit and identify opportunities that can help take your CPA client acquisition numbers to new heights.

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